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Pure Math, Pure Joy
e271828 writes "The New York Times is carrying a nice little piece entitled Pure Math, Pure Joy about the beauty and applicability of pure math as carried out at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. There is an accompanying slideshow of pictures of mathematicians in action; I particularly loved the picture titled Waging Mental Battle with a Proof."
The joy of pure math. Second only to the joy of pure self-mutilation.
Very cool article! I liked the statement: "Nobody knows when some abstruse bit of math will float off a blackboard at a place like this and become a..." It reminded me of the radiant primes observation
I imagine it will be a method similar to this that helps us discover the first billion digit prime number, not some brute-force method. Speaking of prime numbers & slightly off-topic, on 5/31/2003 there was an eclipse (solar) over Norway from 4:43AM to 6:41AM. 5, 31, 2003, 443 & 641 are all prime...
What this picture doesn't show is the analogue clock just above the blackboard.. they aren't thinking.. just clock-watching !
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
But the "unreasonable effectiveness" of mathematics in explaining the world, as the physicist Eugene Wigner once put it, is a minor motivation at best for those immersed in the field. Most mathematicians say they are in it for the math itself, for the delirious quest for patterns, the thrill of the detective chase and the lure of beautiful answers.
I sure hope this isn't really true. If mathematicans aren't really interested in helping understand the world, why should society fund them? I certainly know that a major motivation for my career in science is that understanding the world through science will help people, cure diseases, etc.
OK, not in it's entirety, and not it is a serious problem, but it would be nice if the editors could make sure that each Sunday, we don't see so many postings from a single news source. Maybe some sort of summary each Sunday on interesting stories in the NYT Sunday Edition.
Pure Math, Pure Joy
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I'd never studied linear algebra until recently when I had to learn just enough to work through the inverse kinematics of a robot arm. Actually, I never really got along with Mathematics very well anyway. But looking at how matrices can solve all kinds of problems just by drawing zig-zags through rows and columns of numbers made me wonder whether the problems they model or the problems themselves came first. As I was learning the little bit of this math that I did, it started to seem to me that the Math has an independent existence, and a somewhat mysterious set of relationships of correlations and causalities connected to but not dependant on physical nature.
This article also reminded me of a good book (story wise, not much math) that a lot of you have probably read. It's called Fermat's Enigma. If you haven't read it you should. It's a really good book and an easy read. I might even make you want to read a real math book again ;)
Honk if you're horny.
Very large prime numbers are the basis of the RSA asymmetric encryption algorithms which you trust your credit card numbers and other private information to.
Anyway, I'm almost thinking you're trolling because the rest of your post demonstrates some sort of keen-ness for over-simplification. Maybe you're just not out of secondary school yet, but for your information, trig, calculus and the rest are useful for a lot more stuff than what you mention. All the different areas of maths often intermingle in any physical subject.
For the interesting tidbit of information, there has yet to be a mathematical discovery which has not found practical applications. Even group theory, which at first was thought to have nothing to do with physics or any engineering sciences, was found to be very applicable to some extremely interesting problems of fundamental physics (describing the symmetries of fundamental particles).
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Erdos himself was a device for converting speed into theorems. Ironically he lived to be 83 years old, prolifically creating new math until the very end.
My guess is that more mathematicians use amphetamines than is commonly acknowledged. This is how some older mathematicians try to keep their "edge".
BTW have you computed your Erdos Number?
How arbitrary is that?
How is e) (prime) less valid than the solution?
How about g) (The only number greater than 29)?
How about a) because its the "bad luck" number in Chinese culture (Too bad you missed out on that one, "white devil")?
How about j) (Because today is Sunday and I feel like its the correct answer)?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Why else would a major newspaper have a piece that describes maths in a positive light?
You ever hear of an evil or mad Mathematician? Nope, only evil or mad scientists.While they may not be philanthropists, they are not super weapon packing misanthropes. Oh well, back to the lab...
Yep and ofcourse everybody knows that mathematicians do it smoothly and continuously or discretely in groups and in fields. Interesting lifestyle :P